Over the last six months, dozens of batches of medications used to treat high blood pressure have been recalled by the Food and Drug Administration over concerns that they may be contaminated with a cancer-causing chemical. On Friday, the FDA said there is currently a national shortage of the widely prescribed medication valsartan, and that other drugs used to treat high blood pressure could also become in short supply due to the ongoing recalls.

Several generic valsartan products sold in the U.S. have been found to be contaminated with the chemical NDMA, which has linked to cancer.

You're out late at night and you've had one too many drinks. You're feeling a bit inebriated, and you're wondering if a cup of coffee can help. Many of us have been there.

Well, here's the lowdown: While a cup of joe or shot of espresso can help to perk you up, it's not going to help sober you up. In fact, in some situations, the combination of caffeine and alcohol could be potentially harmful.

"I call it the 'perfect storm,' " said Dr. Mary Claire O'Brien, senior associate dean for health care education at the Wake Forest School of Medicine, who has researched the interactions between caffeine and alcohol, including its effects on injury risk.

It turns out you don’t have to risk a bad trip to enjoy the mind-expanding benefits of psychedelics.

According to researchers from Leiden University, just a tiny dose of magic mushrooms or truffles containing psychedelic substances — an amount unlikely to make you think the floor is alive and wants to eat you — can enhance your cognitive abilities.

With the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the future of Roe v. Wade is looking increasingly grim.

But even while the landmark law remains in place, the rollback of abortion access across the US is already well underway — and women who want to safely terminate their pregnancies face an increasing number of roadblocks.

Enter Aid Access, a new online service through which women can obtain medical abortion pills, mifepristone and misoprostol, to take at home. As first reported by the Atlantic’s Olga Khazan, Rebecca Gomperts, a Dutch physician and activist, launched the service six months ago in response to overwhelming US demand.

A small but growing proportion of the youngest children in the U.S. have not been vaccinated against any disease, worrying health officials.

An estimated 100,000 young children have not had a vaccination against any of the 14 diseases for which shots are recommended, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Thursday.

"This is pretty concerning. It's something we need to understand better — and reduce," said the CDC's Dr. Amanda Cohn.

Most young children — 70 percent — have had all their shots. The new estimate is based on finding that, in 2017, 1.3 percent of the children born in 2015 were completely unvaccinated. That's up from the 0.9 percent seen in an earlier similar assessment of the kids born in 2011. A 2001 survey with a different methodology suggested the proportion was in the neighborhood of 0.3 percent.

Young children are especially vulnerable to complications from vaccine-preventable diseases, some of which can be fatal.

Young Americans are dying in rising numbers because of drugs, alcohol and suicide, according to new federal data.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) issued its annual comprehensive health and mortality report, which analyzes trends in death rates by cause and demographic. Drugs, alcohol and suicide, the report says, have contributed to the first drops in U.S. life expectancy since 1993. While U.S. life expectancy rose from 77.8 to 78.6 years between 2006 and 2016, the trend reversed during the end of the decade, leading to a 0.3-year decline between 2014 and 2016 — in large part because of rising rates of drug overdoses, suicide and liver disease, as well as Alzheimer’s.

From the 16th century to the 19th, scurvy killed around 2 million sailors, more than warfare, shipwrecks and syphilis combined. It was an ugly, smelly death, too, beginning with rattling teeth and ending with a body so rotted out from the inside that its victims could literally be startled to death by a loud noise. Just as horrifying as the disease itself, though, is that for most of those 300 years, medical experts knew how to prevent it and simply failed to.

Which brings us to one of the largest gaps between science and practice in our own time. Years from now, we will look back in horror at the counterproductive ways we addressed the obesity epidemic and the barbaric ways we treated fat people—long after we knew there was a better path.

Many healthy Americans take a baby aspirin every day to reduce their risk of having a heart attack, getting cancer and even possibly dementia. But is it really a good idea?

Results released Sunday from a major study of low-dose aspirin contain a disappointing answer for older, otherwise healthy people.

"We found there was no discernible benefit of aspirin on prolonging independent, healthy life for the elderly," says Anne Murray, a geriatrician and epidemiologist at Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis, who helped lead the study.

It’s not clear how many children drink coffee, but more than 70 percent of kids consume caffeine on a given day, according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics. This seems to only increase as they get older — caffeine consumption has more than doubled among adolescents since 1980, research shows. Kids who drank either coffee or soft drinks had double the risk of sleep disturbances in a large study of over 4,000 school-aged children. Although the FDA does not have formal recommendations regarding caffeine intake for children, Canada has a maximum limit of 45 mg per day (about one can of soda). The AAP is even more strict, and discourages parents from allowing consumption of caffeinated beverages altogether.

What if we could generate novel molecules to target any disease, overnight, ready for clinical trials? Imagine leveraging machine learning to accomplish with 50 people what the pharmaceutical industry can barely do with an army of 5,000. It’s a multibillion-dollar opportunity that can help billions.

The worldwide pharmaceutical market, one of the slowest monolithic industries to adapt, surpassed $1.1 trillion in 2016. In 2018, the top 10 pharmaceutical companies alone are projected to generate over $355 billion in revenue. At the same time, it currently costs more than $2.5 billion (sometimes up to $12 billion) and takes over 10 years to bring a new drug to market. Nine out of 10 drugs entering Phase I clinical trials will never reach patients. As the population ages, we don’t have time to rely on this slow, costly production rate. Some 12 percent of the world population will be 65 or older by 2030, and “diseases of aging” like Alzheimer’s will pose increasingly greater challenges to society. But a world of pharmaceutical abundance is already emerging. As artificial intelligence converges with massive datasets in everything from gene expression to blood tests, novel drug discovery is about to get more than 100 times cheaper, faster, and more intelligently targeted.

Rival Cronos Group (CRON) has soared more than 40% in the past week, including an 11% pop Tuesday. Tilray (TLRY), another competitor that just went public on the Nasdaq last month, has skyrocketed more than 60% in the last five days. Tilray shares were up 10% alone on Tuesday.

Both companies, which are also based in Canada, have clearly attracted more interest after Constellation (STZ) took an increased stake in Canopy Growth. That deal, announced last week, led to a 30% surge in Canopy's stock (CGC).

Investors are betting that Constellation, which owns Corona and other spirits and wine brands, may eventually launch cannabis-based beverages and other products.

Infused drinks likely won't be for sale in the United States, where cannabis continues to be prohibited by the federal government.

California, the nation’s most populous state and a national leader in protecting and advancing reproductive health, could become the first to ensure that medication abortion is available to college students in public universities.

For the first time in recent decades, life expectancy across high-income countries is declining and this pattern is even more dramatic in the United States, according to a study published in The British Medical Journal Wednesday.

“It’s really striking that we saw so many high-income countries simultaneously experience life expectancy declines in one year,” Jessica Y. Ho, lead author and assistant professor of Gerontology and Sociology at the University of Southern California, said in an interview with ABC News.

Researchers from the University of Southern California examined trends in life expectancy across 18 high-income countries from 2014-2016. Information from the majority of these countries from 2014-2015 showed that people, on average, didn’t live as long. The average decline in longevity was 0.21 years for women and 0.18 years for men. Increasing deaths related to a severe season of influenza was thought to be a contributing cause for this decline, especially in those 65 and older.

A federal court has given the Trump administration until Friday, Aug. 10, to figure out a plan for the 28 immigrant children still detained at the Shiloh Treatment Center in southeast Texas. Any child who is not deemed to pose “a risk of harm to self or others” must be transferred to a less restrictive facility, per Judge Dolly Gee’s July 30 ruling in a lawsuit filed earlier this year. She also addressed the lawsuit’s claims that residents at Shiloh have been given forced injections and prescribed antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and antipsychotic drugs without consent. The government must stop this practice, she determined, and make sure that psychotropic drugs are given to detainees at Shiloh only in accordance with Texas child welfare laws and regulations.

For weeks now, this misuse of psychiatric medications has been cited as a prime example of the White House’s “despicable,” “reprehensible,” “inhumane and unconscionable” border policies. “President Donald Trump’s zero tolerance policy stands to create a zombie army of children forcibly injected with medications,” said the article from the Center for Investigative Reporting that first brought the allegations to light. “The president has to be ordered not to give children psychotropic drugs, but I’m the one that’s tripping?” one Democratic candidate for Congress said a few days ago, in defending progressives’ call to defund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

NBC OUT released a new report that details how gay men are using Grindr to sell and buy drugs. The article features the accounts of a dozen men who recount their experiences with drugs on the popular dating app.

Here are a few of them:

“The issue with drugs has been a gay community plague since the ‘80s, but in the modern era, you don’t need a guy who knows a guy. All you need to do is open up your app and look for that capital ‘T.’”-Derrick Anderson, a Grindr user from Chicago

“Today with Grindr, men can have sex and drugs delivered to their door instantly. I think it’s gotten worse in the past couple of years. The apps are making it easier for people to find him.” – Phil McCabe, social worker and president of the National Association of LGBT Addiction Professionals

“Drugs were always sprinkled throughout the app, but now it’s nothing like before. Of course drug sales are happening on other dating apps, but at a fraction.” – George, a Grindr user in New York

“It gives me more clientele than I would normally get on the street.” – Mike, a teaching assistant in New York City who also sells drugs

The article also profiles how drugs users and sellers use various code words and emojis in headlines and profile descriptions to describe what drugs they are looking for or selling. For instance, a diamond is used to represent meth, while a snowman is used to represent cocaine.